For the second year in a row, Hamilton’s Mathletics team has won the Snow Bowl competition, freezing out competition from Colgate University, St. Lawrence University, and Skidmore College.
To determine the annual winner of the Snow Bowl, each team adds up its top five scores on the William Lowell Putnam Exam, the most famous—and notoriously challenging—undergraduate mathematics exam in the country.
Students who competed were Roy Aharon ’23, Omar Beesley ’20, William Bresnahan ’22, Aben Carrington ’23, Anthony Christiana ’22, Lindsay Gearty ’21, Elisabeth Howard ’20, Matthew Reading ’20, Trevor Scheuing ’23, Jonathan Sills ’23, Samuel Vigneault ’21, and Spencer Woolfson ’20.
Associate Professor of Mathematics Andrew Dykstra, who coaches Mathletics, said this year Hamilton earned a national rank of #120. “This is a strong performance relative to other years,” he said. “Because Hamilton won last year, the team had a 10-point handicap on the Snow Bowl this year. So, winning two years in a row is extra impressive.”
Hamilton’s highest ranking ever was #29, which was earned by the 1995 team. Other notable years were 2012 when Hamilton ranked #42, and 2016 when the team ranked #88. “Last year’s team was ranked #160, so our performance this year was a bit stronger, which helped us get over the 10-point handicap,” Dykstra said.
“There is some exciting new talent in the current first-year class which contributed to this year’s victory, so we will certainly be competitive next year,” he predicted. “Next year we will have a 20-point handicap, making a three-peat extraordinarily difficult to achieve. That said, Hamilton achieved a three-peat exactly once in its history, early in the 2010s.”
